Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Aspie sex

This is a pretty funny article about aspie sex. It's worth reading in its entirety. There are some amusing commonalities between aspies and sociopaths in this area (as in most areas). Here is my favorite vignette:
I tried having lesbian sex. I answered an ad. Picture her: The professional ballet dancer who had just quit, and to celebrate, she got breast implants. And me, the aspiring professional beach volleyball player.

She spent the whole evening talking about how smart I am and how many books I’ve read and how strong I am.

I spent the whole evening talking about how hot she is.

I did not realize that this exchange meant that I had to be the aggressor in bed.

I said, “Are we going to kiss now? We can’t do this whole date and not kiss.”

She said, “I need you to seduce me.”

I said, “What? Are you kidding? Just take your clothes off. How are we going to have sex if we keep putting it off?”

She said, “It’s not like that. There has to be a game or something.”

I said, “Okay. You do the game. What should we do?”

She pouted. I did not realize it was part of the game.

I told her that we were really ineffective together and I thought we needed some guy there with us to run the show. We never did that. We never did anything.
Aspies, you are hilarious. Thanks for being you!

Lots of love,
m.e.

Saturday, January 1, 2011

New year's resolutions

Every year when people ask me my new year's resolutions I tell them the same thing -- watch every episode of the Simpsons. It gives them a bit of a laugh and it gets me out of answering the question truthfully, the truth being that I never make resolutions. What's the point? I have to con and incentivize myself to do pretty much all the good things I currently do and use all of my willpower to keep my worst impulses in check. There is no room in my fully-leveraged life for trying to give up bad habits or gain new ones. In fact, I'm ecstatic if I manage to not gain any more bad or lose any good in any particular year, entropy being the universal force that it is.

This year I had a bit of an epiphany, though. Everyone makes resolutions. I'm losing out on a lot of "normalcy" points by not making a resolution list. I should just make a fake one and leave it out where people can see it and read it. For those of my intimate associates that do read it, it will make me seem even more transparent/open/normal. Right? What do you think of this for a sample list:
1. Budget better.
2. Learn to count to 10 in a new language.
3. Floss twice (!) a day.
4. Give two compliments for every criticism.
5. Laugh more.
6. Get to sleep before midnight.
7. Take a junior college intro to statistics class.
8. Exercise weekly
9. Eat more vegetables.
10. Stop grinding teeth.
Right mix of banal and aspirational? Any other suggestions? Or real resolutions?

Friday, December 31, 2010

Risky business

I was never really conscious of being a big risk taker when I was younger, although I ended up in urgent care facilities more than average, have woken up to medics and oxygen masks, etc. All growing up my parents made me take extra safety precautions that even my siblings did not have to do take -- helmets while skiing, mouthguards for sports, elaborate buddy systems, and emergency contact information on my person at all times. All my instructors and guides would laugh when my parents warned them to keep an eye out for me. I was a bit of a daredevil, but it was more than that -- I would often take risks that people wouldn't even have considered to be an option, wouldn't have predicted the need to warn me about.

It makes me wonder, are sociopaths risk-seeking or risky? Risk-seeking would mean that they are willing to take bigger risks for bigger payouts. For instance, between two choices of a 100% chance of winning $10,000 or a 1% chance of winning a million, a risk-averse individual is more likely to choose the former and a risk-seeking individual is more likely to choose the latter. The difference between the two becomes more stark when losses are involved, for instance a 1% chance of losing a limb vs. a 100% of breaking a limb. Which would you choose? A risk-seeking individual is more likely to choose the small chance of losing a limb and a risk-averse individual is more likely to choose the certainty of breaking a limb.

In contrast, a risky person takes illogical risks just for the sake of risk. For instance, a risky person might choose a 1% chance of winning only $500,000 rather than a 100% of winning $10,000. Likewise, a risky person might accept a 3% chance of losing a limb rather than the certainty of breaking a limb. A risky person may behave this way because (1) they are incorrectly assessing the risks and payouts involved, (2) they are correctly assessing the risks, but get some other benefit from the risk itself (i.e. psychic benefit from the risk itself), or (3) a mixture of 1 and 2.

Of course most choices we make are not as simple as 100% of $10,000. Even for a choice where you are certain you will either lose a limb or break it, everyone will value their own limbs differently and in different situations. Assuming two people are similar in every way but one is a sociopath and the other normal, I wonder what exactly would make them different when it comes to risk.
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